New Droid Turbo Charges to 8 Hours of Battery Life in Just 15 Minutes

Motorola/Verizon

With all the Nexuses and Galaxies and Motos and HTC Ones out there, the Droid lineup of phones can get lost in the shuffle. The new Droid Turbo, developed in a partnership between Verizon and Motorola, wants to steal back some of the spotlight with some enticing features.

First on the list is a fixed 3,900mAh battery that gets up to 48 hours of life on a single charge. Rather than having to wait around for that beefy battery to charge up, you can top it off quickly with a “Turbo Charging” feature that provides eight hours of battery life when you plug it in for 15 minutes.

The main camera is a 21-megapixel shooter, giving you plenty of room to crop and use digital zoom without making a pixellated mess. Those high-res photos look sharp on the Droid Turbo’s 5.2-inch AMOLED QHD display (2560 x 1440, 565ppi), and the phone also shoots 4K video at 24fps.

Durability is sure to be a strong suit, as the Droid Turbo comes with black backings made of ballistic nylon or metallic glass fiber or a red backing made of the metallic glass fiber. They feel good in the hand. And just in case the Gorilla Glass screen breaks, Verizon and Motorola are offering free “Turbo Screen Assurance” coverage good for one free screen replacement per two-year contract.

It’s well-specced under the hood, with a 2.7GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon system on a chip and 3GB RAM. Although the new phone runs Android 4.4 KitKat with the dramatically redesigned Android 5.0 Lollipop waiting in the wings, Verizon and Motorola say that the new phone is “guaranteed” to get a Lollipop upgrade once the new OS is available.

The new Droid Turbo will be available this Thursday, Oct. 30, on Verizon only. It’ll be $200 on contract ($25 per month) for a 32GB version with the black or red backing in both materials. The 64GB version is priced at $250 on contract ($27 per month) with the black ballistic nylon backing only. To grease the wheels of commerce, Verizon is offering a trade-in plan: Any phone you trade in will get you a minimum of $100 towards the new Turbo, and they’ll also waive all the activation fees.

A Stellar New Fantasy Novel and 4 Other Books We’re Reading This Month

It’s not easy, but in between the midnight screenings, Netflix binges, and multiplayer gaming marathons, we try to read. And sometimes, that even includes actual books. They’re the perfect escape in our hypercaffeinated, soundbite-dominated, attention-deficit-disordered digital age. But we still need motivation, just like everyone else. So, to keep our eyes open and the pages turning, we’re starting a (not very official) Underwire book club, and we want you to join. Every month, we’ll tell you what we’re reading, and maybe even gin up some discussion questions to animate our virtual dinner parties. We’re going for a range of experiences, so you’ll find nonfiction titles alongside our new genre faves, plus more “literary” stuff if we’re feeling it. This month, we’re balancing some quick reads—a Jonathan Franzen-blessed debut and a slim companion volume from one of our favorite new(-ish) fantasy writers—with Walter Isaacson’s latest blockbuster on the history of technological innovation, along with a few other selections. Attention, readers: book club starts now.

The Blockbuster: The Innovators by Walter Isaacson

Release: October 7

In the intro to his fat new tome on a topic no less ambitious than the history of digital-era innovation, Isaacson writes: “We talk so much about innovation these days that it has become a buzzword, drained of clear meaning.” Well, yes: that word, along with its related forms—innovate, innovative, innovator—should probably be banned from most self-respecting publications for a while. But if anyone can get away with it, it’s Isaacson, author of Steve Jobs and institution unto himself. Also, not enough people appreciate Ada Lovelace’s contributions to computer science (Isaacson’s first chapter). She was an innovator of the truest kind.

For discussion: Is innovation the same thing as genius?

The Crowd-Pleaser: Yes Please by Amy Poehler

Release: October 28

It’s a good time to be a comedian-author: Neil Patrick Harris and Russell Brand both have books out this month (the former being framed, amusingly, as a “choose your own autobiography”). But the one we’re most excited about is Amy Poehler’s. Her bestie Tina Fey dominated this category in 2011; will Yes Please be this year’s Bossypants? The back cover mentions her “frequent turns as acting double for Meryl Streep,” so on the basis of that joke alone, we say yes.

For discussion: Once and for all: Tina Fey or Amy Poehler? (Hint: There’s no right answer.)

The Genre Pick: The Slow Regard of Silent Things by Patrick Rothfuss

Release: October 28

If Patrick Rothfuss nails the third book in his Kingkiller Chronicle—and it’ll be tough—he’ll have written one of the great fantasy trilogies of our time. But that won’t come out for, we dunno, another couple of years. In the meantime, we’ll have to make do with this companion volume about the sprite-like Auri, one of the series’ most beloved characters. We love Auri, but what’s the deal with fantasy writers dragging their feet with these side-story embellishments? George R. R. Martin, we’re also looking at you—we don’t need an untold history (also out this month). At least J. K. Rowling had the good sense to finish Harry Potter before she gave us Pottermore.

For discussion: Is Rothfuss already one of the great fantasy writers of our time?

The “Literary” Choice: The Wallcreeper by Nell Zink

Release: October 1

Much has been made of Jonathan Franzen’s endorsement of this newcomer’s talents. Which, OK, great, we’re glad Franzen’s a fan (a…fanzen?). Zink’s debut novel doesn’t need a celebrity blurb. Its premise is so good it endorses itself: woman gets hitched to a birder, moves to Europe, and becomes an eco-terrorist. You had us at “eco-terrorist.” Wait, no, you had us at “birder.” (That’s probably where she had Franzen as well—he’s no stranger to ornithological pursuits.)

For discussion: Which matters more to you in literary fiction: premise or prose?

The Existentially Weighty One: The Meaning of Human Existence by Edward O. Wilson

Release: October 6

With a title like that, you might expect something encyclopedia-length. After all, this is the same Harvard biologist who once turned in 732 pages about ants. (The Ants, written with Bert Hölldobler, won Wilson his second Pulitzer Prize.) But no: apparently Wilson, now 85 years old, can answer the oldest question in a mere 187 pages. His The Social Conquest of Earth, the precursor to this book, overburdened us with facts and theories; this one, Wilson’s “most philosophical work to date,” promises to contextualize those insight, and fill us with wonder.

For discussion: What IS the meaning of human existence? Or, more seriously: How does Meaning advance the ideas Wilson put forth in The Social Conquest of Earth?

Best of the Rest

We can’t read everything, but if we could, Chuck Palahniuk (whose Fight Club means a lot to some people) came out with Beautiful You last week, and William Gibson is following up 2010’s Zero History with The Peripheral. There’s also As You Wish, in which actor Cary Elwes tells us (inconceivable!) tales from the making of The Princess Bride. Finally, vampire queen Anne Rice is resurrecting her beloved antihero in Prince Lestat, out today. That woman must be approaching immortality herself.

Angry Nerd: Horror Movie Clichés Must Die!

The latest crop of horror flicks are full of nothing but a bunch of recycled clichés. These oft-repeated tropes deserve to meet a bloody end. Do we really need Michael Bay bringing another Hasbro product to life with Ouija? And who asked for that new wannabe Blair Witch Project movie Exists? Angry Nerd explains why the only frightening thing this Halloween is the surplus of crappy horror flicks.​

How Utah’s Bryce Canyon Got Its Bizarre, Beautiful Sandstone Formations

Jiri Bruthans created this pillar with simulated salt weathering; in nature (like at Bryce Canyon, below), factors like frost and rain also shape the landscape. Courtesy of Jiri Bruthans

Getty

Aa the story goes, the iconic spires in Utah's Bryce Canyon National Park once were human-animal “legend people,” until an angry coyote god turned them into rock. This is probably not how it actually happened, but scientists haven't been able to add much more than to say “it's a weathering thing.” So geoscientist Jiří Bruthans and his colleagues at Charles University in Prague tried mimicking the process in miniature: They took 4- by 12-inch blocks of “locked sand”—a material that's between loose sand and sandstone—and crammed decades of erosion into weeks or months by simulating rain and intensive salt weathering. What Bruthans discovered is a sort of geological beauty trick in which the key factor is weight. The massive load of rock, which he approximates by squeezing his blocks with clamps, actually stabilizes the structures: The stress locks the grains of sand into place. It's an elegant explanation and one that befits the sculptural formations. If Bruthans ever gets tired of geoscience, he can always sell his experiments as modern art.

What’s Up With That: People Feel the Weather in Their Bones

Wrists are a common place people claim to feel pain related to weather changes. Getty Images

When I was younger, my grandma would occasionally issue solemn prophesies for rain. These declarations would come after she’d spent a few minutes rubbing her arthritic wrists. With a pensive gaze, she’d credit the prediction to her aching joints.

I was reminded of this yesterday. I’d been working on my laptop when my ankle, titanium-braced from an old break, started throbbing. I thought nothing of it until I stepped outside, and into a surprise rainstorm. I’d always been skeptical of grandma’s arthritic omens, but limping down the sidewalk in the wake of my own revelation gave me reason to reconsider. Could science have an answer for why some people seem to feel the weather in their bones?

What's Up With That?

Each week, we'll explain the science behind a strange phenomenon that you may be wondering about, or may be hearing about for the first time right here. If you've seen or heard of something you'd like us to explain, send us an email. View the entire collection.

Why It's So Hard to Catch your Own Typos

Why You Think Your Phone Is Vibrating When It Really Isn't

Why Building Bigger Roads Actually Makes Traffic Worse

Turns out, scientists have been studying this for several decades. The answer has been tricky to nail down, but most of the research seems to indicate that bones and joints, weakened by age or injury, seem to be sensitive to subtle changes in barometric pressure. This is a measurement of the atmosphere’s density, and sudden changes (especially drops) typically signal a change in the weather.

In one of the earliest studies (paywall) to establish this link, published in 1990, a pair of scientists from the University of Pennsylvania put four arthritic patients in a chamber where they had control of the temperature, humidity, and barometric pressure. Three of the patients reported an increase in pain whenever the pressure dropped. This was too small a group to draw hard conclusions, but more studies in the following decades have supported the findings.

Rather than shove patients into artificial atmospheric bubbles, most of the later studies compared patients’ reports of their pain with data from weather stations. One of the most recent, published in 2007, matched up the reports of 200 arthritis sufferers from across the country with temperature, humidity, and pressure data from local stations (almost all of the weather stations were within a mile of a subject). They too found that joint pain often preceded a change in barometric pressure.

As the researchers point out, figuring out exactly what is happening inside a joint as barometric pressure rises or falls would require some fairly invasive procedures. So the definitive study hasn’t yet been done. Researchers have, however, used findings from physiological studies in people to come up with a hypothesis.

The air pressure, they believe, is messing with the fluid that keeps your joints lubricated. Not only does this fluid let your joints hinge, twist, and swivel, it helps stabilizes them so you can keep your balance. Your body’s squishy parts are susceptible to atmospheric pressure. They swell when the pressure drops. This is why your feet swell during air travel, and the fluid in your joints is probably no exception. In 1990, a group of researchers did tests on cadavers’ hips and found that the joint’s fluid pressure seemed to be regulated by the outside air pressure. From this, researchers in the 2007 paper speculated that as these fluids respond to barometric changes, they would irritate the inflamed, arthritic joints.

Of course, this hypothesis isn’t airtight. The body is a complicated system that is constantly surprising scientists. Besides, there are plenty of people with arthritis whose aching joints have no auspicious abilities. And it doesn’t help me understand whether my healed fracture—which is neither a joint nor arthritic—has become a bellwether.

But, it’s good to know that science is looking into this. In the event of a major storm, I think I could do pretty well for myself as an ersatz meteorologist. In the meantime, I’ll keep working on my pensive, thousand-yard stare.

The Next Big Thing You Missed: The Startup That Makes It Easy to Launch Your Own Dollar Shave Club

Cratejoy CTO Alex Morse and CEO Amir Elaguizy (left to right). Cratejoy

Dan Scudder runs a tie-of-the-month business called Root Bizzle.

He and two buddies launched the startup last year. The basic idea is simple: People sign up for the subscription service, and each month, the company sends them a tie that suits their particular tastes. But actually pulling this off was rather complicated. After launching the operation, Scudder and his tiny team were struggling to juggle the many pieces of technology needed to make things work—including a public website, a payment system, a postage system, a shipping and tracking system, a marketing system, an analytics system—and the list goes on. He now admits that none of it quite worked as it should. “We might have even lost a customer or two,” he says.

But then he showed up at a hackathon and ran into Amir Elaguizy. Elaguizy, the CEO of a brand new company called Cratejoy, invited him to use the company’s flagship product, which was still in its testing phase. As it turned out, Cratejoy is in the business of helping the Root Bizzles of the world. It offers a single online tool for building subscription delivery services, like, say, a tie-of-the-month club.

Cratejoy

That might sound like a niche operation. But at the moment, this kind of subscription service is all the rage. Everyone from Birch Box and Dollar Shave Club to Blue Apron is giving it a go. It’s an old idea made new by the internet, and many see it as a better way to bring retail to the world, to make it more automatic while still giving people what they want. Cratejoy, which officially launched its service this month, aims to make life easier for this growing group of businesses.

Today, Root Bizzle handles its entire operation through Cratejoy. Cratejoy runs the website where people signup for the tie service. It handles payments. It sends the confirmation emails to new users. And it notifies the fulfillment center in Canada when each new tie is needed. All that remains for Scudder and his partners to do is to take a tie, put it into a box, and slap on a mailing label.

And he’s not alone. According to Elaguizy, there are already about 200 businesses using the Cratejoy platform, covering everything from a date-planning service for couples (The Fox Society) to baby clothing (A Little Bundle).

For Sucharita Mulpuru, a principal analyst at Forrester Research, there’s reason to skeptical that this market will be as success as some believe it will. “There’s not always a great universe of people who want to buy this stuff on a recurring basis,” she says. Plus, when working with a shorter cycle—like a month—manufacturing costs are higher. With more lead time, Mulpuru says, you can get the margin benefits of getting your product manufactured for cheap, with longer delivery times.

But Cratejoy can at least streamline some of the logistics. And according to Elaguizy, an additional 3,500 businesses are now on a waiting list for Cratejoy’s services. The subscription craze has only just begun.

The NBA’s New High-Tech Control Center Is a Hoops Fan’s Dream

The NBA Replay Center in Secaucus, N.J., has 94 HD screens and an underlying fiber-optic network to provide refs across the land with faster instant replays. National Basketball Association

The Plaza at Harmon Meadow in Secaucus, N.J., is in the running for the most American place in the world. As you cruise through the parking lot of this office park/strip mall hybrid, 3.5 million square feet of U.S.A. unfurls before you. There’s a Houlihan’s, a Red Lobster, an Outback Steakhouse. A Chipotle, a Chili’s, a Cheeseburger In Paradise. A 14-screen movie theater, an L.A. Fitness. A Dunkin Donuts, which is literally inside a Subway.

But that’s just the appetizer. You can breeze past all that and arrive at the crown jewel of modern Americana. On the southeast end of the plaza is a diamond-shaped office building, and on the first floor, accessible via a hallway lined with an outstanding collection of basketball posters from the ‘70s and ‘80s, is televised-sports Xanadu. Through twin glass doors, 94 high-definition screens greet you with every single camera angle from every live NBA game—including camera angles you won’t see on TV.

This is the brand-new NBA Replay Center, mission control for the NBA’s ambitiously revamped video-review system. After more than two years and $15 million in development, it’ll make its operational debut when the 2014-2015 NBA season tips off tonight. And while the ultimate basketball den is a keg and a bucket of hot wings away from being the world’s greatest sports bar, the league has bigger plans for it: Helping officials make tough calls without disrupting the momentum of a game.

Inside the Beast

The Replay Center is a nationwide video interchange for the NBA, piping live footage in from every broadcast camera in each of the NBA’s 29 arenas. The system absorbs 12 broadcast-quality feeds from each game, with additional camera angles available from each broadcaster if they need it.

National Basketball Association

Within seconds, that raw video can be edited into crucial clips and beamed back to any arena for courtside review. While final decisions are still made by the referees on the court, every replay review will run through Secaucus. Dozens of operators in Secaucus will quickly cue up and edit clips to help officials make tricky calls. In many cases, a multi-angle, time-synced video mosaic will be ready for the refs before they get to the courtside monitors.

Video replay has been part of the NBA since the 2002 season, but reviewable calls were initially reserved to check buzzer-beaters and last-second fouls. Now, with 15 types of calls eligible for replay in the upcoming season, it has become an integral part of the game for referees. But despite the expansion of video-reviewable calls, courtside replays have still leaned heavily on favors from broadcast trucks, even as recently as last season.

“The broadcasters have what they call EVS channels and the referees would come to courtside, put on the headset, and talk to the broadcast trucks to feed them angles,” explains Steve Hellmuth, executive vice president of operations and technology for the NBA. “Most of our reviews happened during timeouts, so it worked well. But as we added [in-game] replay triggers, it became a bit too much work for the trucks. That’s when the NBA decided we needed to take this over centrally.”

Hellmuth oversaw the implementation of the new system, which still uses video feeds from broadcasters. However, those feeds now pipe directly into the NBA’s new system without the need for play-by-play requests. From the broadcast trucks to the NBA’s own network to the Replay Center in Secaucus, the massive flow of 240-Mbps J2K-encoded HD video is shuttled back and forth across the continent by a 10-gigabit fiber-optic network operated by Zayo Group. It’s a redundant network that’s built to keep the feeds flowing even if there are outages, and it can run solely on batteries and a seven-day generator. On a full-slate gameday, that high-speed infrastructure will be called upon to deliver nearly 30TB of video between the NBA arenas and Secaucus.

On-the-Fly Editing

While the underlying network is impressive in terms of its speed, complexity, and sheer might, the last inch of the system—the interface used by replay operators to select, enlarge, edit, and share multi-angle clips—is equally impressive for its simplicity. The replay production features run on the Evertz DreamCatcher system used by several sports stadiums, broadcasters, and professional leagues.

To make the system a perfect fit for the NBA’s needs, Hellmuth and NBA Vice President of Referee Operations Joe Borgia used 15 regular-season games and last year’s NBA Finals as an elaborate dress rehearsal. During those games, replay clips were requested from broadcasters the old-fashioned way when the referees reviewed plays. But in the background, the league was honing the software they’d use for the first time this season.

“We tested timing, what were the best angles to use, what was the right communication protocol, what feeds could we get,” says Hellmuth of the 15-game regular season test. “Each of those Finals games became a software-design session for our referee operations group.”

Each NBA Replay Center workstation is a three-monitor setup, where operators can quickly edit, enhance, and share clips using touchscreens and a jog wheel. National Basketball Association

The result is that anyone who’s used a touchscreen can make a sophisticated multi-angle clip and beam it 2,400 miles away within seconds. Each of the Replay Center’s 14 workstations has a three-monitor setup and a jog-wheel console for scrubbing quickly through video. From jumping between live and archived action to flagging plays for review to sharing a live stream from a Secaucus monitor to a courtside display in Portland, much of the mission-critical work is done with quick taps on touchscreen monitors.

A left monitor in the setup shows a tile view of all available camera angles from the game; tapping them selects one or more feeds to work with. This brings up a full-screen view of the selection on the middle monitor, and the operator uses its multitouch screen to crop and enlarge a section of video. They can also instantly create a two-, three-, or four-box video mosaic automatically synced up in time code. The right monitor shows what will be displayed to referees on the courtside scoring table, and tapping an onscreen button instantly streams that footage to the arena.

“What really distinguished [the software] for us is that in the application, it allowed us to zoom, to do split-screens, to precisely synchronize the feeds, which is really important,” explains Hellmuth. “You have to know that the timing is exact on each side of that screen.”

Quickly creating these sophisticated clips will reduce the amount of time needed to review a play and keep a fast-flowing game moving, but the review process will still require stopping play for a few seconds. And despite the speed and efficiency of the new system, there will still be some replay situations it won’t be able to help with.

NBA Executive Vice President of Operations and Technology Steve Hellmuth. National Basketball Association

“I’d really like to come up with a methodology for recognizing pressure on the three-point line,” says Hellmuth. “No matter how good the cameras are, even if they’re 4K or 8K, their effectiveness is totally dependent on the angle from which [the cameras are] shooting.” To that end, Hellmuth says he has discussed a pressure-sensitive in-court system with Dr. Paul Hawkins, inventor of the Hawk-Eye system used in professional tennis and the English Premier League.

Hellmuth has a history of bringing technological innovation to the NBA. During the 2002-2003 season, he implemented rows of LED backboard lights to help referees see the release of the ball and an expiring clock at the same time. He also oversaw the implementation of the action-tracking STATS LLC SportVU system in all NBA arenas, and his next goal is to wed that system with the NBA’s new high-speed network to help referees make more tough calls.

“We have a player-tracking system but the information is not immediately available to us,” says Hellmuth. “What I’d really like to provide is information on ball trajectory. A goaltending call is a very difficult call to make, because you have to precisely describe the arc of the ball. So that’s tops on my list for next season.”

As for the offseason, don’t get your hopes up about the hot wings. “We’re going to produce some games remotely with the WNBA,” Hellmuth of the multi-million-dollar TV room in the offseason. “Bring back six camera feeds and switch the show back here—experiment with virtualized production, as it were.”